From Sad Puppies to simple sadness... the Hugos keep keeping on...

[K Frame]

Anyone see anything about this fiasco at the latest Hugos?

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a46612912/science-fiction-hugo-awards-2024/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

What a flusterlcuck, and the clown in charge certainly hasn't helped the situation.

Can't explain why works were deemed to be ineligible, even after claiming that the committees were following the Hugo Constitution.

If the allegations of CCP censorship are true, I wonder how those who banged the drum for all sci-fi to be queer as *expletive deleted*ck 100% of the time and worked to eliminate the group that became known as the Sad Puppies feels about it...

This last statement is really hysterical, given what happened to Larry Correia and others who tried to move against the anti-white author, anti-white/male characters movement...

"Whatever happens to the Hugos moving forward, one thing is clear: No one should have the power to erase books from the reading lists of future Jason Sanfords."

[HankB]

I've been a science fiction fan for a long time, and many of the current award-winning authors are either people I've never heard of or else they're writing woke crapola I want no part of.

Sort of like the Oscars - the Motion Picture Academy and I haven't been on the same page for a long time, but these days we're not even reading from the same book. And I have doubts that we're using the same library.

Same thing applies to the Hugos.

[JTHunter]

Having grown up "devouring" the writings of the likes of ERB, Asimov, Blish, Heinlein, and Norton, it probably been at least 10 years since I bought a SF book.  And that may have some of the Star Wars spin-offs about Han and Leia's 3 kids.

[dogmush]

Having grown up "devouring" the writings of the likes of ERB, Asimov, Blish, Heinlein, and Norton, it probably been at least 10 years since I bought a SF book.  And that may have some of the Star Wars spin-offs about Han and Leia's 3 kids.

There's good sci-fi out there from this century.   Off the top of my head "Gun Runner" by Larry and John D Brown is good.

I despise his politics but Scalzi's "Old Man's War" series was pretty good, at least through "Zoe's Tale" which is as far as I got.

The "Legacy of the Aldanata" series buy Ringo is great, especially the first four.

"The Aeronaut's Windlass" and "The Olympian Affair" by Jim Butcher are solid, with a promise of more to come.

"The Eden Chronicles" by S.M Anderson are good fun, and play to our politics.

"Into the Real" and "Through the Storm" are building a really interesting world.

David Weber's Safehold series is epic.

And since this is a Hugo thread and the Hugo's include Fantasy I would be remiss not to mention the "Saga of the Forgotten Warrior " really well written epic Fantasy.

[Ben]

"The Eden Chronicles" by S.M Anderson are good fun, and play to our politics.

I second the Eden Chronicles. He also has a SHTF series called Seasons of Man.
Also the Omega Force series by Joshua Dalzelle. He does the Black Fleet series too.

And let's not forget our own guy, Mr Devonai.

[HankB]

John Ringo's Troy Rising trilogy is pretty good, even though he got the optics wrong. (Literally, optics. Light doesn't behave the way he thinks it does.) I'm amazed it got published, since he included a lot of politically incorrect stuff about our friends from South America.

Jack Campbell (aka John Hemry) Lost Fleet books are good.

Harry Turtledove has written some good stuff.

And another thumbs up for David Weber's Safehold series.

[K Frame]

I'll admit that I don't read a lot of sci-fi, and what I have read has been more of the classic stuff like the short stories of Phillip K. Dick (absolutely AMAZING) and Dune (double soup Tuesday at the Orphanarium AMAZING).

Most of my sci-fi interaction has been via movies and TV.

[Bogie]

Well, I tend to read a lot of pulp... The Kindle Unlimited stuff... That ain't gonna get a Hugo, but it is at least often fun.
 
Oh, and... political fiction too... I found Kurt Schlichter particularly amusing...

[lee n. field]

Anyone see anything about this fiasco at the latest Hugos?

Yeah, I saw it.

Real SF fandom is something I don't have the money or time to even attempt to  participate in.  "Yeah, let's all fly to BFE province China for Worldcon."  I can't even make it when it's in Chicago.

These days I don't even try to keep up with SF.  Most of the names are unfamiliar, and the books mostly don't look interesting.  And most people's idea of "SciFi' is dominated by movies, the idiot box, and video games.

I will occasionally try something new, and sometimes be pleasantly surprised.  I recently picked up Edgar Pangborn, A Mirror for Observers.  Looks like it will be good.  Read Fenton Wood's Yankee Republic on Peter Grant's recommendation, and found it fun and charming.  Greg Bear, City at the End of Time.  Michael Z. Williamson's "Freehold", a book I missed when it was new because it looked like just another military SF novel, which I don't go for.  I must have read it 5 or 6 times.  (I resonate with the unending flood of traumatic crap he puts his protagonist through.)

[Ben]

Real SF fandom is something I don't have the money or time to even attempt to  participate in.  "Yeah, let's all fly to BFE province China for Worldcon."  I can't even make it when it's in Chicago.

I don't follow it much as I'd rather be reading, but from what I can tell, current "fandom" is dominated by "scifi celebrities" like Will Wheaton and Felicia Day, who are completely TDS infected and spend 90% of their "scifi posts" spouting extreme far left politics to their fanbase, who lap it up.

[dogmush]

These days I don't even try to keep up with SF.  Most of the names are unfamiliar, and the books mostly don't look interesting.  And most people's idea of "SciFi' is dominated by movies, the idiot box, and video games.

Unpopular opinion:
The very best Sci-Fi being produced today, and for like two decades, is in video games.  From Halo, to Mass Effect, Portal, Halflife, Bioshock, Prey, Horizon, Cyberpunk 2077, Outer Worlds, Control,  Atomic Heart, and so on.  That is the medium Scifi (and Fantasy)  is flourishing in.

I still love a good book, and as my previous post pointed out there are great books out there to read, but video games is where the genre is at right now.

[K Frame]

"Bioshock"

One of the most thematically and visually beautiful games ever created.

And damned fun to play, as well.

[Pb]

A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias is an excellent scifi novel.

[MechAg94]

Ryk Spoor and Eric Flint wrote Boundary which is a good SciFi book in the near future.  There are several books in that series that are good.

Dave Freer is a good writer.  SciFi like Rats,Bats, & Vats and Pyramid Scheme.  A bit of comedy is in those.  Fantasy in Dragon's Ring. 

I would also mention Jack Campbell.  Aside from his Lost Fleet series, he has some other sets of books that all good reads.  He is just a good writer.